The present invention relates to a solid-state electronic imaging device with a so-called electronic shutter employed, for example, in apparatuses such as an electronic still camera (a still video camera) and a video camera.
Generally, in order to obtain an image of an object with an appropriate exposure or an image exposed with an appropriate amount of light, it is indispensable to adjust a shutter speed and a diaphragm or an iris. For the adjustment operations above, information attained from a light measurement is required. According to the conventional method, such measurement information is directly obtained by using a serial video signal produced from an imaging device, or by a light measuring element which includes one photodiode or several photodiodes that are disposed to develop an output signal therefrom as measurement information. In the former method, since the video signals are delivered in a serial fashion, it is difficult to extract only the desired information necessary for the control and adjustment of the object processing. Furthermore, at least a period of 1/60 second is necessary to read out a field of video signals. In the latter method, a problem results from measurement information being obtained only in a fixed location of an object scene or information being obtained about an average of the incident light only in a fixed location. When measuring the amount of incident light in each of a plurality of locations in an object scene, namely, for a so-called multi-light measurement, there has been recently developed a light measuring element. However, this light measuring element is expensive and the location of a pattern to be subjected to the light measurement (the partition pattern of the light receiving area) is limited.